And with that, Lieutenant Merkel is now Lieutenant Fischer. Additionally, E.J. will get an acknowledgment in the book, and a signed copy when it comes out. And a pony! Well, no, not a pony. At least, not from me. Sorry. But thanks, E.J., for such a morbidly amusing haiku, and congratulations.

As for the finalists: Gaaaaaah, so many good ones. I was paralyzed by choice! I hate it when that happens. Yes, I know. I suck. We’ll just have to have another contest at some point.

Coherence is one of the special properties of laser light. In the laser context it refers to all the waves being of the same length and phase. (I’m sure it’s not about being less-intelligent, just less familiar with physic terms.)

I must be stupid because I don’t get the laser reference…I followed the rules and added the stuff that was suggested…If I had know we could write anything then put at the bottom that there is a reference there to something I would have gone in a completely different direction.

Fischer’s entry followed the rules and was much more clever in it’s subtleness than the many folks that tried to jam too many references in their entries. And, most importantly, it was the one that Scalzi liked the most. If Scalzi had chosen something that didn’t follow his specified rules, or chosen three winners or zero winners, that would have been his perogative. His site, his book, his decision.

Consider if you will:
The Canonical Bacon Page contains about 375 bacon-related posts collected over a span of 2.38 years, from an early posting in mid-September 2008 to the latest which appeared this Monday.

Imagine that for every comment in the CBP contribution, there exist two haiku, each independently composed and submitted— to you…
— all in just 104 hours, give or take a few.

Now stop imagining and get back to those selections! When you’ve finished that, you’ll want to update your “Perspective” motivational poster caption to read as shown below:

Awards? Success? Fame? Perhaps one day they will be yours.
But the fact is, nothing you'll ever do will be more popular
than that online picture of bacon taped to a cat --
except for judging another haiku contest.

Because haiku is twice as popular as bacon. Do the math if you aren’t convinced:

750 : 375 :: _?_ : 1

P.S.
I could KICK myself so hard for not pirati^Wplagerisi^Wcribbing
from this until well after your contest ended. Since the trend
in this thread suggests that you (personally) can never have enough haiku,
here you go: